Love All: A Novel (32 page)

“Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s okay for me, too.”

I glanced at Carl. I wanted to tell him I was sorry, but he didn’t yet know what for. I loved him, but I couldn’t say that, either. He was my best friend, and I prayed not to lose him.

“I could let you win,” said Carl.

“No,” I said. “You can’t.”

Carl shrugged. He wanted to win, too, but he’d needed to offer.

By five o’clock, the hill was a checkerboard of quilts and blankets and folding chairs, and at least some people were there to see Carl and me. Teddy and Kim huddled together under the comforter from Teddy’s bed, and when Mom arrived she crossed the lawn to join them. I watched her reintroduce herself to Kim, then softly pat Teddy’s head. I looked for Dad but he wasn’t with her.

Mom called me over and pointed up the hill to where Poppy was seated on a wooden bench by himself.

“He came to see you,” she said.

“Who invited him?” I asked, but she put a hand on my shoulder and steered me up the hill.

I walked to Poppy’s bench and sat beside him. A blanket from our linen closet was folded over his lap, a hat on his head. He looked frail but he smiled and I scooted closer to my grandfather, wanting to feel his warmth.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi.”

He started to touch my hand, then seemed to change his mind and pulled on the hem of the blanket instead. “Did I ever tell you about the time I won five dollars in a third-set tiebreaker in 1924?” asked Poppy.

About a hundred times.

“Play every point like it’s the last one, and don’t even think about the possibility of losing.”

“I’m not,” I lied.

“Yeah, you are.” He reached out for my hand again and this time took it. “Is this your racket hand?” He opened my palm and felt for calluses. “Don’t let the racket move around. Hold on tight. You hit topspin?” I nodded. “Backspin?” I shrugged. “Use the whole court,” said Poppy. “Bring him in. Send him out. Is that Carl?” Poppy squinted and I pointed out Carl in the crowd. “You can buy him a drink when you win. Still friends, but not till after the game.”

I smiled and Poppy said, “I’m sorry about the other day. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“That’s okay.”

“No, it’s not.” He kissed my head and I leaned against his bony shoulder. “Nonz would’ve loved to see you play,” he said. And I thought it was true, so I pictured her here on the bench next to Poppy, and I could almost see her: blue apron, yellow dress, the smell of cinnamon in the air. I looked at Poppy and he smiled and said, “Play hard.”

Threading my way through the crowd, I passed Evan and Danke Schoen; Teddy and Kim and most of Teddy’s friends; Em and her little sister, Maggie. Dad showed up just before I stepped onto the court, waving to me, mouthing the words,
Good luck
.

“Let’s go,” said Carl.

But I was waiting for Sam.

“One second,” I said. “I have to go to the bathroom.”

In the dim office hallway I walked to the boys’ bathroom, stopping outside the door to listen to the voices: maybe Sam, definitely Doug and Alan. How long could I wait before Carl came looking for me? I counted to thirty, then counted to thirty again.

“There you are,” said Sam behind me.

I turned. He was sink-showered, his hair wet but his brow still sweaty from his match.

“You ready?” he asked.

“Not really.”

He took my hand and pulled me into the shadows of the hallway and we stood beside a potted plant in the last light of day, then he backed me up against the wall and leaned into me, and I felt his whole body against mine, and we kissed, longer this time, long enough for Doug and Alan to come out of the bathroom and see us there together.

“You better go,” said Sam, but I can’t remember leaving him. Surely Alan and Doug would’ve been laughing, catcalling, and probably Sam and I would’ve pulled away from each other to minimize the damage, to refute the idea that we were more than friends—but we were more than friends, and in my memory I stayed with him forever, and the match never happened, and Carl didn’t drift away from us, and my parents were married for always.

Outside, I joined Carl on Court 1 and it seemed ten times bigger than the court I knew. Above us, the sky was lavender with a full moon already crowning in the east, the pine trees swaying gently in the breeze.

Claw led us to the net and cracked opened a new can of balls.

“Who’s serving?” he asked.

I looked at Carl and he spun his racket and I called down and it was down.

Claw handed me the Penns and told us to warm up for five minutes. “Let’s get going,” he said. “One set. It’s freezing out here.”

At the gate, he turned on the lights and the purple bulbs began to hum and buzz and glow. The sun was setting, painting the tops of the pine trees orange, and the balls were electric against the court.

I slipped two balls into my pocket and gave Carl the third.

“I’m about to whippoorwill you out of here, six–love,” I said.

“No effing way,” said Carl.

We walked back to our separate baselines and I started the warm-up with a shot into net, then overhit the next ball, bouncing it behind Carl’s head.

Carl restarted the rally and it was a normal feed to my forehand, which I sent back to his forehand, and our warm-up was under way. When the balls were at net, we jogged in to pick them up and I asked Carl if he wanted to practice volleys.

“Let’s just start,” said Carl.

I asked for two practice serves and Carl said, “Fine, but hurry.”

Both of my practices went in so I said, “These are good,” and showed Carl the ball.

“Love–love,” I said. I tossed up my first serve and spun it into the corner of the service box and Carl returned it into the net, and we were on our way.

It took us a while to find our rhythm—we were nervous, and the night was quickly cooling, and there was a band of tension between us, a humming sense that our lives were about to change. The first couple of points found us standing at the T like beginners, tapping the ball, afraid to hit through. I was focused on the difference between thirty–love and fifteen–all, then I thought about how Poppy had said to go all out on every point: there was no score, just this moment, and the next time the ball came to me I returned it as hard as I could to Carl’s deep backhand, wide of the line.

I glanced at the crowd, which was a mistake: my knees wobbled with nerves. I saw Carl’s mom seated next to my mom—close, the way she and I had been early this morning—then Dad pacing outside the fence with his back to Mom, and finally Teddy, who had migrated across the hill so that he was standing nearly behind me, his fingers laced through the chain-link fence, Dad’s image only closer.

“Fifteen–all,” I called and bounced the ball twice, then served to Carl’s backhand. He dinked it and I charged the net, my racket open for a volley, but the ball caught the tape and fell back to my side.

“Come on,” said Teddy behind me. “You can do this.”

I bounced the ball, then tossed it up and let it drop, bounced it some more. I thought of all the bus rides I would miss with Sam if I lost; I thought of him in Hamilton, in Richfield Springs, in Mount Markham without me. I stepped back from the baseline and played with my racket strings.

“Let’s go, Jules,” said Dad from the sidelines. He’d meant it as a cheer, but it ignited something inside me and I turned and yelled, “Leave me alone!”

After that, not a sound from the hill. I wondered how many people out there already knew about my dad and the woman in Cherry Valley; it wasn’t something we could contain. I already planned to tell Sam and Carl, and Teddy would tell Kim, because they were our family, too. I caught a glimpse of my mother leaning forward on her quilt, bending toward me, and she looked like Nonz, almost, and I wondered if I was too old to crawl into her arms. Carl could have the match—it would be victory by forfeit—and I started to walk away, but, just then, out of the darkness came Sam, joining Carl and me on the court as though it were the most normal thing in the world.

“Hey,” he said to me. “Hey,” he called to Carl.

He picked up a ball that had rolled to the net post and threw it back to me, then sat on the bench where he always sat when Carl and I played.

“Fifteen–thirty,” he said. “Let’s go.”

I stepped to the baseline and bounced the ball twice, finding a cadence; I tossed it up and back and swung hard, my serve kicking over the net and dropping in, and Carl took it on the rise, returning the ball down the line to my forehand, which I hit crosscourt to his forehand. He scooped it up, off balance but still it was coming over, and I moved in on the ball, let it bounce, then knocked it back to his shallow backhand. Carl went for it, got his racket on it, and stabbed it into the fence.

The sound of clapping came on like thunder, a single boom from the dark beyond the courts. Carl showed me the face of his racket, saying nice point, and I backed up to the baseline to serve again.

“Thirty–all,” I called, which was to say it was even, which was to say it was anyone’s game.

I held and we switched sides near Sam, who handed each of us a can of water. We drank without talking. Carl’s face was red; my legs were springy, my muscles loose. I jogged in place, then handed Sam my water can and walked back out to the court.

Carl took two practice serves, then two more. None of them went in. “These are good,” he said finally, but they weren’t. Love–fifteen.

Carl kicked the fence and I heard his mom shout from the hill, “You can do this, Carl.” Someone else said, “Come on, Carl”—maybe it was Em’s sister, Maggie—and Carl jumped in place a few times, as if he hadn’t been warmed up, then served again.

I was late on my swing and returned it wide into Court 2. After that, Carl held easily, tying the score at 1–1.

When we were still on-serve at 4–5, Mr. Lowry from the
Cooperstown Crier
started snapping flash photos from outside the fence, which wasn’t unheard of but had certainly never happened to me. I saw his lens poke through the chain-link, first by Carl’s feet, then by Carl’s head, then suddenly by my head. I was distracted and Carl’s serve got past me four times while I was monitoring the cameraman. Carl held, 5–5, and it was my serve.

Carl knocked the balls over the net to a volley of applause. I looked up, past Sam, to the top of the hill where Poppy was parked on his bench. He had summited the night, high above the valley, a little closer to the sky and a little closer to Nonz. I could see the outline of his overcoat, his wide-brimmed hat, and I waved in case he was still awake, and I thought I saw him wave back, but I couldn’t be sure.

I showed the ball to Carl and he nodded and I tossed it up and back. It arced high, then hung still, an ornament on the evergreens, the brightest star. I swung through, brushing the side of the ball, and it kicked up and dropped into the back of the service box. Carl misjudged the spin and tipped it off his racket frame.

I wanted to win and I tried not to think about Carl on the other side of the net, wanting not to lose. We were like spiders on a web and if someone pushed someone else had to get pulled. I could feel the strands under us. The web contained Nonz and Poppy, Teddy and me, my parents’ marriage and also their divorce. In six months, they would be separated. In a year, we would bury Poppy in the plot next to Nonz. In three years, the courts at Bassett Hall would be slated for demolition, the nets taken down, the lights dismantled to make room for a new parking lot for the hospital. The lines on the courts were the veins in our arms, and the service boxes were the chambers of our hearts; the divot in the baseline had foreshadowed the end, but we couldn’t stop it, we could only slow it down.

Carl and I did our part. I held, he held, and then it was 6–6, and there was no going back. Buzzing lights, and the sound of Sam’s voice calling out the tiebreaker score: 1–2, 2–2, 2–3, 3–3. Carl and I were deadlocked, vacuum-sealed in a match we couldn’t win or lose, which was the only kind of match for me. Eventually, one of us would stumble. Eventually, one of us would win. But as long as the game lasted, my parents were still married, Poppy was just across the hall, and Sam and Carl and I were impregnable, protected by our words—us on the inside, the world on the outside. We’d had slitters for everything, but never for ourselves.

At 6–7, Carl’s first serve floated long and he offered up a paddy ball on his second. I stepped in, taking it on the rise. My return bounced at Carl’s feet and he danced around it and got his racket on it, and the ball came off his strings like a comet, tailing up into the sky, above the fence and the lights and the tops of the trees. The stars charted its course.

I tracked the ball with my left hand, rotating my hips and coiling my racket. I shuttle-stepped forward, backward. Blood rushed my ears. I waited until Carl had no choice—until he picked a side, went left toward the backhand court while I shifted right—and then the ball was here, and just like that, I swung.

A
BOUT
THE
A
UTHOR

C
ALLIE
W
RIGHT
is a reporter-researcher at
Vanity Fair
magazine. She graduated from Yale ad earned her MFA at the University of Virginia, where she was a Poe/Faulkner Fellow in Creative Writing and won a Raven Society Fellowship. She is the recipient of a
Glimmer Train
Short Story Award for New Writers and her short fiction has appeared in
Glimmer Train
and
The Southern Review
. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.